“Help yourself…” by that I don’t mean help yourself to all the food you can eat or beverage you can drink or anything else that politely requires permission.
I am literally referring to every Filipino “helping themselves” as we all face the global economic crisis created by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the Middle East, as well as the incompetence or indifference of our elected officials locally.
Just the other day, all the news outlets in the Philippines declared that the official rate of inflation has gone up to 7.2 percent, alongside another announcement that fuel prices were going up at the petrol stations.
While countries like Singapore are now actively informing, even warning, their citizens that the worst is yet to come while rolling out various support programs, here in the Philippines, Filipinos find no relief except for those poor people in the vote-rich economic bracket. If you are really poor, you get ayuda or dole outs.
So, what about the rest of Pinoys who are in the lower middle class, middle class? Why does assistance and solutions have to be based on economic class in the first place? We also experience the same inflation and crisis!
Unfortunately, there is no good news. When I thought hard about it all, the phrase “No one is coming to save you” kept repeating itself.
The author is Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem:
“No one is coming to save you; no one is coming to make life right for you; no one is coming to solve your problems. If you don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.
“The dream of a rescuer who will deliver us may offer a kind of comfort, but it leaves us passive and powerless.
“We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough, somehow a miracle will happen, but this is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life as it drains away into the abyss of unredeemable possibilities and irretrievable days, months, decades.”
In the last two days, people also kept saying “God helps those who help themselves” and that I suppose is the summary of things. You can pray all you want, believe all you want, but you also have to do something to get closer to what you want.
If you don’t believe – don’t bother. If you believe, then do something.
Our knee jerk reaction to financial stress is to “mag-tipid” or cut costs or spend less. There is wisdom in that, but it entails lots of self-sacrifice.
We need to be strategic, intentional, open-minded in our decisions. Logic tells us that “investing” is not good in times of economic difficulty. But hey, look at our Chinese cousins who see opportunity in adversity.
Look at the bargain hunters or developers and builders who invest in land or don’t stop construction because their most important “commodity” is time.
I have long been encouraging people to get solar power installed in their homes because of the great savings in electricity. People say it costs a lot and takes five to 10 years for ROI.
When we decided to install solar power instead of taking a long needed vacation or buying a “want,” little did we know that the prices for solar equipment would double after just two months.
Now the good Lord just made me realize that we are looking at it as an expense and not as an “investment.” We all want to make investments but most of them require millions of pesos we don’t have.
But by “investing” in solar we not only reduced our electricity bill, but the money we save each month is actually a monthly ROI or profit, depending on what we did not pay out. We save about P8,000 a month based on past electricity bills. Multiplied by 12 months that is P96,000 a year.
Similarly, we belittle other areas of potential “investment,” doing something with available resources, especially with our free time. One of the areas where Filipinos have been hit hard economically is in food inflation.
I just learned that kalamansi is P200 to P250 per kilo. Papayas and bananas are nearly a hundred pesos if not more, while kangkong, kamote etc. are not any cheaper either. I grow the stuff in containers and sacks in Kapitolyo and in Lipa.
Ironically, when it comes to food production, backyard gardening, the so-called experts have spared no one, saying unless we practice corporate farming, the idea cannot be scaled up.
In the first place, farming in the old days was about sustenance, to sustain a family and perhaps pay for essentials such as a good education.
Nowadays, if you don’t have a lot of space or a lot of land or refuse to be creative in your attack, you might believe the so-called experts. But going back to the proposition of “investing,” the same can be said about backyard, rooftop, wall gardens.
Every bunch of kangkong, kamote, spinach, pechay or bokchoy is one meal. You again have a benefit, saved money and that money is your ROI on the effort and lose change you invested. If you saved P50 to P100 in veggies, that’s P18,250 to P36,500 a year.
So, if you save hundreds or thousands a month, your investment is already earning “profits” for you. Whatever you invest in, create, build or produce is you “helping yourself.”
* * *
E-mail: utalk2ctalk@gmail.com